The real defect of this kind of knowledge, however, affects its process of knowing as much as its material. As to that process, in the first place we do not see any necessity in the construction. The necessity does not arise from the nature of the theorem: it is imposed; and the injunction to draw just these lines, an infinite number of others being equally possible, is blindly acquiesced in, without our knowing anything further, except that, as we fondly believe, this will serve our purpose in getting at the proof. Later on this pur- posive device then comes out, and is therefore merely external in character, just because it is only after the proof is found that it comes to be known. In the same way, again, the proof takes a direction that begins any- where we like, without our knowing as yet what relation 'Preface 4l iliis beginning has to the result to be brought out. In its Jourse, it takes up certain specific elements and relations md lets others alone, without its being directly obvious f?hat necessity there is in the matter. An external purpose controls this process.
The evidence peculiar to this defective way of knowing — an evidence on the strength of which mathematics plumes itself and proudly struts before philosophy — rests solely on the poverty of its purpose and the de- fectiveness of its material, and is on that account of a kind that philosophy must scorn to have anything to do with. Its purpose or principle is quantity. This is precisely the relationship that is non-essential, alien to the character of the notion. The process of know- ledge goes on, therefore, on the surface, does not affect the concrete fact itself, does not touch its inner nature or notion, and is hence not a conceptual way of com- prehendmg. The material which is to enable mathe- matics to proffer these welcome treasures of truth consists of space and nmnerical units {das Eins). Space is that kind of existence on which the concrete notion inscribes the diversity it contains — an empty, lifeless element in which its differences likewise subsist in passive, hfeless form. What is concretely actual is not something spatial, such as is treated of in mathematics. With unieahties like the things mathematics takes account of, neither concrete sensuous perception nor philosophy has anything to do. In an unreal element of that sort we find, then, only unreal truth, fixed lifeless propositions. We can call a halt at any of them; the next begins of itself de novo, without the first having led up to the one that follows, and without any necessary connexion having in this way 42 Phenomenology of Mind arisen from the nature of the subject-matter itself. So, too — and herein consists the formal character of mathematical evidence — because of that principle and the element where it appHes, knowledge advances along the hues of bare equality, of abstract identity. For what is hfeless, not being self-moved, does not bring about distinction within its essential nature; does not come at essential opposition or unlikeness; and hence involves no transition of one opposite element into its other, no qualitative, immanent movement, no seZ/-movement. It is quantity, a form of difference that does not touch the essential nature, which alone mathematics deals with. It abstracts from the fact that it is the notion which separates space into its dimensions, and determines the connections between them and in them. It does not consider, for example, the relation of line to surface, and when it compares the diameter of a circle with its circumference, it runs up against their incommensurability, i.e. a relation in terms of the notion, an infinite element, that escapes mathematical determination.
Inamanent or so-called pure mathematics, again, does not oppose, time qua time to space, as a second subject- matter for consideration. Applied mathematics, no doubt, treats of time, as also of motion, and other concrete things as well; but it picks up/ from ex- perience synthetic propositions — i.e. propositions ex- pressing relations, relations determined by their es- sential nature — and merely applies its formulae to those propositions assumed to start with. That the so-called proofs of propositions like that stating the equilibrium of the lever, the relation of space and time in gravitation, etc., which applied mathematics fre- Preface 43 quently gives, should be taken and given as proofs, is itself merely a proof of how great the need is for know- ledge to have a process of proof, seeing that, even where proof is not to be had, knowledge yet puts a value on the mere semblance of it, and gets thereby a certain sense of satisfaction. A criticism of these proofs would be as instructive as it would be significant, if the criticism could strip mathematics of this artificial finery, and bring out its hmitations, and thence show the necessity for another type of knowledge.
As to time, which we are asked to think of as the coimterpart to space, and as constituting the object- matter of the other division of pure mathematics, it is the notion itself in the form of existence. The prin- ciple of quantity, of difference which is not determined by the notion, and the principle of equality, of abstract, lifeless unity, are incapable of deahng with that sheer restlessness of hfe and its absolute and inherent process of differentiation. It is therefore only in an arrested, paralysed form, only in the form of the quantitative unit, that this essentially negative activity becomes the second object-matter of this way of knowing, which, itself an external operation, degrades what is self- moving to the level of mere matter, in order thus to get an indifferent, external, lifeless content.
Philosophy, on the contrary, does not deal with a determination that is non-essential, but with a deter- mination so far as it is an essential factor. The abstract or unreal is not its element and content, but the real, what is self-establishing, has life within itself, existence in its very notion. It is the process that creates its own moments in its course, and goes through them all; and the whole of this movement constitutes its positive 44 ' Phenomenology of Mind content and its truth. This movement includes, therefore, within it the negative factor as well, the element which would be named falsity if it could be considered one from which we had to abstract. The element that disappears has rather to be looked at as itself essential, not in the sense of being something fixed, that has to be cut off from truth and allowed to lie outside it, heaven knows where; just as similarly the truth is not to be held to stand on the other side as an immovable lifeless positive element. Appearance is the process of arising into being and passing away again, a process that itself does not arise and does not pass away, but is fer se, and constitutes reality and the life-movement of truth. In this way truth is the bacchanalian revel, where not a soul is sober; and because every member no sooner gets detached than it 60 ipso collapses straightway, the revel is just as much a state of transparent imbroken calm. Judged by that movement, the particular shapes which mind assumes do not indeed subsist any more than do determinate thoughts or ideas; but they are, all the same, as much positive and necessary moments, as negative and tran- sitory. In the entirety of the movement, taken as an unbroken quiescent whole, that which gets distinctness in the course of its process and secures specific exist- ence, is preserved in the form of a self-recollection, in which existence is self-knowledge, and self-knowledge, again, is immediate existence.
It might well seem necessary to state at the outset the chief points in connexion with the method of this process, the way in which science operates. Its nature, however, is to be found in what has already been said, while the proper systematic exposition of it is Preface 45 the special business of Logic, or rather is Logic itself. For the method is nothing else than the structure of the whole in its pure and essential form. In regard, however, to what has been hitherto currently held on this point, we must be sensible that the system of ideas bearing on the question of philosophical method, belongs also to a stage of mental culture that has now passed away. This may perhaps seem somewhat rough- handed or revolutionary; and I am far from adopting an attitude of that sort; but it is significant that the scientific regime bequeathed by mathematics — a regime of explanations, divisions, axioms, an array of theorems, with proofs, principles, and the consequences and con- clusions drawn from them — all this has already come to be generally considered as at any rate out of date. Even though there is no clear idea why it is unsuitable, yet little or no use is made of it any longer; and even though it is not condemned outright, it is all the same not in favour. And we must have the prejudice and conviction that what is excellent can turn itself to practical account, and make itself acceptable. But it is not difficult to see that the method of propound- ing a proposition, producing reasons for it and then refuting its opposite by reasons too, is not the form in which truth can appear. Truth moves itself by its very nature; but the method just mentioned is a form of Imowledge external to its material. Hence it is pecuhar to mathematics and must be left to mathe- matics, which, as already indicated, takes for its prin- ciple the relation of quantity, a relation alien to the notion, and gets its material from lifeless space, and the equally lifeless numerical unit. Or, again, such a method, adopting a freer style, one involving more 46 Phenomenology of Mind of arbitrariness and chance, may have a place in ordi- nary Ufe, in a conversation, or in supplying matter-of- fact instruction for the satisfaction of curiosity rather than knowledge, very much like what a preface does. In every-day life the mind finds its content in different kinds of knowledge, experiences of various sorts, con- crete facts of sense, thoughts, too, and principles, and, in general, in whatever Ues ready to hand, or passes for a sohd stable entity, or real being. The mind follows wherever this leads, sometimes interrupting the connection by an unrestrained caprice in deahng with the content, and takes up the attitude of determining and handhng it in quite an external fashion. It runs the content back to some touchstone of certainty or other, even though it be but the feeling of the moment; and conviction is satisfied if it reaches some familiar resting-place.
But when the necessity of the notion banishes from its realm the loose procedure of the " raisonnements " of conversation, as well as the pedantic style of scientific pomposity, its place, as we have already mentioned, must not be taken by the disconnected utterance of presageful surmise and inspiration, and the arbitrary caprice of prophetic utterance; for this does not merely despise that particular form of scien- tific procedure, but contemns scientific procedure altogether.
Now that the triplicity, adopted in the system of Kant — a method rediscovered, to begin with, by in- stinctive insight, but left Kfeless and uncomprehended —has been raised to its significance as an absolute method, true form is thereby set up in its true content, and the conception of science has come to light. But Preface 47 the use this form has been put to in the Kantian system has no right to the name of science. For we see it there reduced to a hfeless schema, to nothing better than a mere shadow, and scientific organisation to a synoptic table. This formahsm — about which we spoke before in general terms, and whose procedure we wish here to state more fully — thinks it has comprehended and expressed the nature and life of a given form when it proclaims a determination of the schema to be its predicate. The predicate may be subjectivity or objectivity, or again magnetism, electricity, and so on, contraction or expansion, East or West, and such hke — ■ a form of predication that can be multiplied indefinitely, because according to this way of working each deter- mination, each mode, can be applied as a form or schematic element in the case of every other, and each will thankfully perform the same service for any other. With a circle of reciprocities of this sort it is impossible to make out what the real fact in question is, or what the one or the other is. We find there sometimes constituents of sense picked up from ordinary intuition, determinate elements that certainly should mean some- thing else than they express; at other times what is inherently significant, viz. pure determinations of thought — like subject, object, substance, cause, univer- sality, etc. — these are apphed just as uncritically and unreflectingly as in every-day life, are used much as people employ the terms strong and weak, expansion and contraction. As a result that type of metaphysics is as unscientific as those ideas of sense.
Instead of the inner activity and self-movement of its own actual hfe, such a simple determination of direct intuition {Anschauung) — which means here 48 Phenomenology of Mind sense-knowledge — is expressed in terms of a superficial analogy, and this external and empty application of the formula is called " construction." The same thing happens here, however, as in the case of every kind of formalism. A man's head must be indeed dull if he could not in a quarter of an hour get up the theory that there are enervating, innervating, and indirectly enervating diseases and as many cures, and who could not — smce not so long ago instruction of that sort sufficed for the purpose — in as short a time be turned from being a man who works by rule of thumb into a theoretical physician. Formahsm in the case of speculative Philosophy of Nature {Naturphilosophie) takes the shape of teaching that understanding is electricity, animals are nitrogen, or equivalent to south or north and so on. When it does this whether as baldly as it is here expressed or concocted with even more terminology, such forceful procedure brings and holds together elements to all appearance far re- moved from one another; the violence done to stable inert sense-elements by connecting them in this way, confers on them merely the semblance of a conceptual unity, and spares itself the trouble of doing what is after all the important thing — expressing the notion itself, the meaning that underlies sense-ideas. All this sort of thing may strike any one who has no experience with admiration and wonder. He may be awed by the profound genius he thinks it displays, and be dehghted at the happy ingenuity of such characterisations, since they fill the place of the abstract notion with something tangible and sensuous, and so make it more pleasing; and he may congratulate himself on feeling an instinctive mental affinity for that glorious way of Preface 49 proceeding. The trick of wisdom of that sort is as quickly acquired as it is easy to practise. Its repetition, when once it is famihar, becomes as boring as the repe- tition of any bit of sleight-of-hand once we see through it. The instrument for producing this monotonous formahsm is no more difficult to handle than the palette of a painter, on which he only two colours, say red and green, the former for colouring the surface when we want a historical piece, the latter when we want a bit of landscape. It would be difficult to settle- which is greater in all this, the agreeable ease with which everything in heaven and earth and under the earth is plastered with that botch of colour, or the conceit that prides itself on the excellence of its means for every conceivable purpose; the one lends support to the other. What results from the use of this method of sticking on to everything in heaven and earth, to every kind of shape and form, natural and spiritual, the pair of determinations from the general schema, and filing everything in this manner, is no less than an " account as clear as noonday " * of the organised whole of the imiverse. It is, that is to say, a synoptic index, hke a skeleton with tickets stuck all over it, or hke rows of pots standing sealed and labelled in a grocer's stall; and is as intelhgible as either the one or the other. It has lost hold of the hving nature of concrete fact; just as in the former case we have merely dry bones with flesh and blood all gone, and in the latter, what is hidden away in those pots has equally nothmg to do with hving things. We have already remarked that the final outcome of this style of thinking is, * Expression adopted from Fichte's " Sonnenklarer Bericht an das Publikum uber das eigentliclie Wesen der neuesten Philosopliie," VOL. I.— E 50 Phenomenology of Mind at the same time, to paint entirely in one kind of colour; for it turns with contempt from the dis- tinctions in the schematic table, looks on them as belonging to the activity of mere reflection, and lets them drop out of sight in the blankness of the Absolute, and there reinstates pure identity, pure formless white- ness. Such uniformity of colouring in the schema with its hfeless determinations, this absolute identity, and the transition from one to the other — these are one and all alike the expression of inert Hfeless understanding, and an external process of knowledge into the bargain.
Not only can what is excellent not escape the fate of becoming thus devitalised and despirituahsed, and seeing its skin flayed and paraded about in this way by hfeless knowledge, and the conceit such knowledge engenders; but, further, such a fate lets us see the power the " excellent " exercises over the heart (GemutJi), if not over the mind (Geist). Moreover, we recognise here, too, that process towards universahty and determinate- ness of form which marks the complete attainment of excellence, and which alone makes it possible that this universahty can be turned to superficial uses.
Science can become an organic system only by the inherent hfe of the notion. In science the de- terminateness, which was taken from the schema and stuck on to existing facts in external fashion, is the self-directing inner soul of the concrete content. The movement of what is partly consists in becoming another to itself, and thus developing exphcitly into its own immanent content; partly, again, it takes this evolved content, this existence it assumes, back into it- self, i.e. makes itself into a mom^ent, and reduces itself to gjmple determinateness. In the first stage of the pro- Preface 51 Preface 51 cess negativity lies in the function of distinguishing and estabhshing existence; in this latter return into self, negativity consists in the bringing about of de- terminate simplicity. It is in this way that the content shows its specific characteristic not to be received from something else, and stuck on externally; the content gives itself this determinate characteristic, ap- points itself of its own initiative to the rank of a moment and to a place in the whole. The pigeon-holing process of understanding retains for itself the necessity and the notion controUing the content, that which consti- tutes the concrete element, the actuahty and hving process of the subject-matter which it labels: or rather, understanding does not retain this for itself, on the contrary, understanding fails to know it. For if it had as much insight as that, it would surely show that it had. It is not even aware of the need for such in- sight; if it were, it would drop its schematising pro- cess, or at least would no longer be satisfied to know by way of a mere table of contents. A table of contents is all that understanding gives, the content itself it does not furnish at all.
If the specific determination (say even one like magnetism) is one that in itself is concrete or actual, it all the same gets degraded into something hfeless and inert, since it is merely predicated of another existing entity, and not known as an immanent living principle of this existence; nor is there any comprehension of how in this entity its intrinsic and pecuHar way of expressing and producing itself takes effect. This, the very kernel of the matter, formal understanding leaves to others to add later on. Instead of making its way into the inherent content of the matter in 52 Phenomenology of Mind hand, understanding always takes a survey of the whole, assumes a position away from the particular ex- istence about which it is speaking, i.e. it does not see it at all. True scientific knowledge, on the contrary, demands abandonment to the very hfe of the object, or, which means the same thing, claims to have before it the inner necessity controlling the object, and to express this only. Steeping itself in its object, it forgets to take that general survey, which is merely a turning of knowledge away from the content back into itself. But being sunk into the material in hand, and following the course that such material takes, true knowledge retm-ns back into itself, yet not be- fore the content in its fullness is taken into itself, is reduced to the simplicity of being a determinate char- acteristic, drops to the level of being one aspect of an existing entity, and passes over into its higher truth. By this process the whole as such, taking itself in its entire sweep, emerges out of the wealth where bare reflection seemed to get lost.
In general, in virtue of the principle that, as we expressed it before, substance is implicitly and in itself subject, all content makes its reflection into itself in its own special way. The subsistence or substance of anything that exists is its self-identity; for its want of identity, or oneness with itself, would be its dis- solution. But self-identity is pure abstraction; and this is just thinking. When I say Quality, I state simple determinateness; by means of its quality one existence is distinguished from another or is an " exist- ence "; it is for itself, something on its own account, or subsists with itself because of this simple character- istic. But by doing so it is essentially Thought.
Preface 53 Here we find contained the principle that Being is Thought: here is exercised that insight which is generally at a discount in the case of the ordinary non-conceptual way of speaking of the identity of thought and being. In virtue, further, of the fact that subsistence on the part of what exists is self-identity or pure abstraction, it is the abstraction of itself from itself, in other words, is itself its own want of identity with itself and dissolution — its own proper inwardness and retraction into self — its process of coming to be.
Owing to the nature which being thus has, and so far as what is has this nature from the point of view of knowledge, this thinking is not an activity which treats the content as something alien and external; it is not reflection into self away from the content. Science is not that kind of Idealism which stepped into the place of the Dogmatism of mere assertion and took the shape of a Dogmatism of mere assurance, the Dogmatism of mere self - certainty. Rather, since knowledge sees the content go back into its own proper inner nature, the activity of knowledge is absorbed in that content — for it (the activity) is the immanent self of the content — and is also at the same time returned into itself, for this activity is pure self-identity in otherness. In this way the knowing activity is the artful device which, pretending to refrain from activity, looks on and watches how specific determinateness, with its concrete fife, just where it pretends to be working out its own self-preservation and its own private interest, is, in point of fact, doing the very opposite, is doing what brings about its own dissolution and makes itself a moment in the whole.
While, in the foregoing, the significance of Under- 54 Phenomenology of Mind standing was stated from the point of view of the self- consciousness of substance; by what has been here stated we can see clearly its significance from the point of view of substance qua being. Existence is Quality, self-identical determinateness, or determinate simpH- city, determinate thought: this is existence as regards Understanding. On this account it is fow, as Anaxagoras first took reahty to be. Those who succeeded him grasped the nature of existence in a more determinate way as elSoi or ISea, i.e. as determinate or specific universahty, kind or genus. The term genus or kind seems indeed too ordinary and inadequate to express ideas like beauty, holiness, eternal, which are now the vogue. As a matter of fact, however, idea {l&ia) means neither more nor less than kind, genus. But we often find in these days that a term which exactly desig- nates a conception is despised and rejected, and another preferred to it which hides and obscures the conception, and thus sounds more edifying, even though this is merely due to its being expressed in a foreign language. Precisely for the reason that existence is designated a genus or kind, it is a naked simple thought; vovi;, simple abstraction, is substance. It is on account of